A Story’s Prologue

I am a 4th generation carpenter and woodworker. I spent many years in the corporate aerospace engineering arena and have taken a step back to return to my roots, de-stress and focus on creating again. I believe, deeply, that hand crafted wooden things have the ability to record our stories and retell them for those that come next. There is something quite special about the stories that an Adirondack chair listens too and passes along at a later date through things remembered and conversations had.

I create a prologue to the stories of others, one that will narrate on its own.

I grew up in Upstate New York (the real Upstate), in the Adirondack park. I spent my formidable years working for my grandfather, a 2nd generation carpenter. He was a stickler for learning in order, hand tools first before power tools. We built many homes together along the way. As a young adult I started my first business so that I could spend winters skiing and snowboarding at Whiteface Mountain, carpentry was a good fit! Many of those projects inspire me to this day and some of them are featured here as well. The last home I built was actually the last home that my grandfather designed, it holds a special place in my heart to this day and when I visit home, I drive by every single time. It has changed over the years but I am positive it has many many stories to tell, just like all things hand crafted.

Fast forward to today, I ended up in Aerospace engineering, on the corporate leadership side of things while always finding time to be a carpenter for customers when needed. Eventually corporate land took its toll and I made the difficult decision to step back (pretty easy actually given the stress level that was immediately removed) and decided to go back to my roots.

My philosophy as a young carpenter has stuck with me through the years…My desire to provide some noble thing to the universe and humans in general is that I can provide shelter for someone through hard work and skills learned from Gramps.

Today, I want to continue to create things from wood because I deeply believe that the wood listens to our stories and passes that knowledge and narrative on to the next owner.

Plastic fantastic things just do not have the same connection to the earth and us as humans. Wood is flawed, deeply varied grain, every bit is different and changes daily through exposure to both human touch and Mother Earth. We carpenters pursue perfection with our woodwork; the pursuit is noble enough.

Perhaps I am helping to create the prologue to someone’s own story and writing a bit more of my own along the way.

~Seth